


Next, close any applications or file transfers that may be eating up your bandwidth. A missed move in a game will always be a missed move in a game. Sure, simple applications are built to be fault-tolerant and auto-reconnect after a dropped connection, but games are different. When you are using a wireless connection, you will often lose data packets, causing interruptions to your experience. The first step to improving your connection stability may seem like an obvious one, but it's important to check this first – make sure you are using a wired internet connection. You can reduce the number of ping spikes in Armies of Exigo in several ways. Your internet connection is like a car – it needs to perform consistently and reliably. Imagine driving a Porsche at 200 miles per hour on a busy highway, when your speedometer instantly drops down to 10 miles per hour! How do you think that would pan out for you as the driver of that sports car? Sure, the car's speed is essential, but it's also equally, and often MORE critical for the vehicle to maintain a *consistent* speed. Sexy or not, stability is just as important, and in many cases more essential than your raw speed metrics. it's not quite as fun as testing the speed, is it? Stability is a less sexy thing to focus on than speed – imagine test-driving a Porsche to assess its "stability".

However, many gamers underestimate the importance of their connection stability. Plenty of gamers look at their ping time like a "scorecard" for their connection. Many people fixate on ping time when they're gaming, zoning in on speed and that magic ping number.
